by Ben Taylor
There is much misinformation and sometimes even intentional disinformation within the “colloidal silver” industry. Much of it is based on falsely making it appear that a particular manufacturer or producer has a ‘silver’ product to which no one else has access. In very few cases, there may be some element of truth, but most of what is sold as “colloidal silver” is not actually colloidal silver. It is often either ionic silver or chemically made silver in a gelatin water base. These two make up the vast majority of so-called “colloidal silver” product sales.
“Colloid” in chemistry is defined as a system in which finely divided silver particles are dispersed within a continuous water medium in a manner that prevents the silver from being filtered easily or settled rapidly. Ionic silver is not made up of particles, but rather silver ‘ions’, so it cannot be a colloid. You can know that it is ionic, because it will be virtually clear and since ions do not reflect light, they have no color. Chemical silver is usually made with silver nitrate mixed in gelatinous water to keep the large particles from settling out, so by definition it cannot be a colloid. Nano-particle silver and even some micron-sized particle silver products are actually “colloidal silver”. If the silver particles are small enough to stay in suspension without artificial means, such as animal or vegetable gelatin, then is a “colloid.
Another practice in the colloidal silver marketing deception is what I call “marketing techno-babel”; the use of certain words or terms that make a product ‘sound’ as if a manufacturer or producer has a special product unavailable to anyone else. Terms such as monatomic, elemental, oxy, sol, are a few. I become a little suspicious when I am unable to find precise definitions of these terms by the manufacturers and sellers on their websites. That is usually because you would then know that it could be applied to most any other product on the market.
The term monatomic, usually without explanation, is sometimes placed on what is ionic silver. Monatomic is simply an ion or particle consisting of one atom. There are both particle silver and ionic silver products consisting of a single atom ions or particles.
Another term used is elemental silver, as if no one else uses elemental silver to make their silver product. Elemental is simply, “a material which cannot be broken down or changed into another substance using chemical means. Elements may be thought of as the basic chemical building blocks of matter.” Frankly every product on the market I am aware of is made from elemental silver.
Then we have terms such as, oxy and sol. Oxy is a short term for oxygen and of course all silver products produced in water will contain oxygen. Sol is simply another term for colloid and again most of what is called colloids simply is not because they are ionic or contain particles too large to stay in suspension in a water media.
When it is claimed that, “our product “does not harm beneficial bacteria in the body or on the skin” or “our silver kills only “bad” bacteria and leaves the “good” bacteria alone”, watch out. According to the research done by Beiersdorf (Curad bandages) and others, silver kills all one-celled organisms by deactivating their oxygen metabolizing systems. The truth is, what is usually termed “bad bacteria” is often “good” bacteria in a state of imbalance or overgrowth. Silver is not somehow programmed to identify different strains of bacteria; it is simply a metal with natural germ-killing properties. My personal experience with too much silver on the skin was during my development of our production unit. During the early stages of this process prior to its complete automation, I was not using rubber gloves and was getting large amounts of silver on my hands every day for a number of weeks. Within about 2 weeks, my hands started drying out, wrinkling, and cracking. I almost immediately realized that most of the bacteria on my skin were being killed off by too much exposure to silver. I started wearing rubber gloves and within a week my hands were back to normal.
Producers on both sides often make the claims that “only ionic silver works” or that “only particle silver works”. Both are simply misinformed statements. Silver in any form will kill one-celled organisms on contact. A large piece of silver held in the mouth or placed on a wound gives beneficial results. I know those who have placed a coiled piece of silver wire on a wound and had results equivalent to putting colloidal silver on it. I have read historically of placing a silver coin on a wound with the same results. The phrase “born with a silver spoon in their mouths” comes from the middles ages when the wealthy and their children would suck on silver spoons to reduce the chances of getting the plague. Ionic silver can also be very effective, especially externally, as long as it does not come in contact with hydrochloric acid (HCL), such as that which exists in the stomach in high concentration at meal times.
Ionic producers often claim that “silver must be clear to be a true colloidal silver” or that ionic silver is colloidal silver. But actually the opposite is true. If it has no color, it is ionic sliver and hence, it is not a colloid, since a colloid as defined above. Although this may sometimes be an intentional deception, it is usually the ignorance of those who produce ionic silver and do not known how to produce particle silver. Again ions do not reflect light, but particles do. For the color spectrum to be visible, there must be light reflected off particles. If you were in space looking at the Earth and were somehow able to deactivate the light reflection from the Earth, it would not be visible to the naked eye.
The FDA defines “colloidal silver” as “a suspension of silver particles in a “gelatinous base”. This generally defines products made with silver nitrate mixed with water and animal or vegetable gelatin. The gelatin is necessary because the particles are so large they would otherwise fall out. True colloidal products, whether colloidal silver, colloidal gold, or colloidal copper contain no gelatin, no animal protein, no chlorides, and no iodides. I seldom agree with such non-Constitutional gangster-driven and rogue governmental agencies, but here is where we may have some common ground when it comes to any concern about silver intake. There is no known toxicity caused by silver ingestion that results in any life or health threatening issues, but a cosmetic condition known as Argyria can result from excessive long-term consumption of silver. This is when silver collects in the fatty tissue under the skin. The culprit in Argyria is almost always chemical silver, usually silver nitrate crudely dissolved in water, followed by ionic silver produced in saline water.
As far as any academic debate on effectiveness between ionic silver and particle silver, I have no axe to grind, because the company I run manufactures and sells both ionic sliver and colloidal silver. Even though, those of us who make a low nano-particle sized colloidal silver sometimes over-blow its importance beyond reason, particle size and surface area can make a difference in effectiveness, especially when trying to heal systemic issues. The bottom line is it doesn’t have to be some special sounding techno-babel name to be effective. You can hold a silver spoon or coin in your mouth and derive some germ killing benefit from it.
Ben Taylor is the President of Utopia Silver found at www.utopiasilver.com